After our discussion this morning, I did a quick google search on "corporate prayer." A ton of info came up about it, but I couldn't find anything that commented on the use of the loaded term "corporate," nor could I find anything about the origins of its use. My search of all English translations of the Bible on biblegateway.com came up with ZERO uses of "corporate."
I found this to be interesting, though: http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/etc/printer-friendly.asp?ID=112 This is a sermon by Jonathan Edwards (the "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" guy), but I'm pretty sure that the author of the website added its title, "Jonathan Edwards on Corporate Prayer." I didn't see that Edwards used that term at all, only "cooperation in prayer."
There's even a corporateprayer.org! http://corporateprayer.org/
As I mentioned in class, my church has corporate prayer 14 times a week, and you can read about it here: http://calvaryfellowship.com/prayer.htm :)
My biggest question now is, when did "corporate prayer" become such a common term? Obviously, it was after Jonathan Edwards (who preached in the 1750s), as he talks about common or group prayer in his sermon, but does label it as "corporate."
